Tag Archives: real food

2018 Turkey Season

Turkey Season Begins in 2018

It’s that time again—farmers have to talk turkey really early in the game because there are so many steps to raising a delicious Really-Pasture-Raised bird, and we raise a limited number each year and want to make sure you get the bird you want for your special holiday occasion. We raise turkeys for folks in the Ark-La-Tex who appreciate the quality of a truly pasture-raised bird and wish to invest in their health and a cleaner means of raising food.

Why Shady Grove Ranch Turkey?

It’s important to Know Your Farmer when it comes to meats, and specifically turkeys, because even “organic” and “pasture-raised” birds from the store may not actually be raised the way you want and expect them to be.

Why? The short story is that these terms are either very loosely defined/enforced, or don’t prohibit common industry practices such as arsenic-feeding, use of bleach and artificial flavor enhancers during processing, or even allowing the birds to actually go outside on actual live, vegetative turf (instead of a manure-laden yard at best, or no outdoor access at worst!).

Here at Shady Grove Ranch, we strive to keep our birds on living, healthy, green pasture by rotating them frequently to new grass, and we’re committed to using feed that is not genetically-modified and doesn’t contain soy, arsenic (yes, they really do that), antibiotics, or other nasty stuff. It takes more time and effort and infrastructure, but our customers agree that it sure makes for some delightful turkey that we feel good about raising and eating and feeding to our kiddos!

Is the Turkey Tasty?

Our turkeys come frozen and ready-to-thaw-and-cook and include the giblets (don’t forget to take them out before cooking!). We get great feedback on the flavor and tenderness of our turkeys. Some folks brine them. Some folks don’t. They are delicious and moist either way, but please note that our birds cook about 25% faster than conventional birds, so keep an eye on that internal temperature! Some customers use the “drumstick wiggle” method to decide if it’s done. I like to judge both the temperature and the color of the juices flowing out of the thigh.

Consider Stocking Up on Turkey

We only raise turkeys once a year, so if you’d like to cook outside the box, feel free to reserve more than one turkey! We had quite a few folks last year get 2 or 3 or as many as 11 to stock the freezer (just make sure you have a really big freezer)! They really love our turkey!

Local Turkey Delivery

Delivery to any of our routine drops in November is FREE! We will contact you closer to when the turkeys are ready to confirm your pickup location. Alternatively, you may pick up at the farm by appointment any time after turkeys are processed in mid-October.

All turkeys must be paid for in full by Thanksgiving and picked up by Christmas or the deposit is forfeited and someone else will eat your turkey! Please be diligent to communicate your pick up plans, as we have limited freezer space to store abandoned birds.

Proposed November Pickup Dates and Locations

(subject to change, but unlikely to do so)

Tyler: Thursday, November 1
Longview: Thursday, November 8
Marshall: Thursday, November 8
Shreveport: Saturday, November 3 or Saturday, November 17
On-Farm in Jefferson by appointment Mon-Sat.

Thanksgiving day is November 22!

What’s next?

Claim your birdie with a paid $30 deposit (one per bird). And of course you’re welcome to claim as many as you like!

Why do we require a deposit? Turkeys take a lot of capital up front to raise… AND, unlike beef, pork, chicken, and eggs (which are also high-capital, ha!), turkeys are a highly seasonal item that is hard to sell after the holidays. We try to raise just enough that we have a few extras for those stragglers that find out about us just before Thanksgiving, but we prefer to spend the summer raising these special birds that we know have a spot reserved on your holiday table.

Deposits received after May 1 will lock in pricing at $5.50/lb and secure your spot on the list. Spots are limited so jump on board early!

How to Place a Deposit on Your Turkey

Hop over to our Turkey Deposits page to purchase your turkey deposit.

Important! By paying your $30 per-bird deposit, you understand that the final price is based on the actual weight of the turkey you receive, and the $30 goes toward that balance, but DOES NOT cover the purchase of the turkey in full. For example, if you sign up for a “Small” Turkey, you may receive a 15 pound turkey. The total cost at $5.50/lb is $82.50. Your deposit paid $30 of that, so the balance due upon pickup is $52.50.

Individual turkey weights can vary as much as 5 pounds or more. We do our best to harvest the birds when they are at the target weight, but there are many uncontrollable factors!

If you require a specific size, please let us know when you order and again when we contact you for pickup arrangements, and we will try to accommodate you. However, please understand that we raise a group of unsexed birds (boys grow bigger than girls), naturally, and outdoors, and we cannot control the final size distribution. We have occasionally had to adjust the size brackets slightly to adjust for variation in size outcomes. We appreciate your understanding the nature of small-scale, natural farming and look forward to serving you this holiday season!

Time-Saving Kitchen Tips You Can Do Today

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If you’re into real ingredients, you probably spend a lot of time cooking and have accumulated your own set of kitchen tips. When we started working through the healing process for Matt’s autoimmune disease (ulcerative colitis), we had to make everything from scratch to avoid the ickies like preservatives, GMOs, vegetable oils, trans fats, artificial flavors and colors, etc. A bonus feature of cooking at home is that you get to enhance the nutrient content of the foods you’re making by using more nourishing ingredients. For example, if you’re making rice or gravy or bread, use homemade broth instead of water. Use mineral-rich real sea salt instead of white salt to boost trace mineral intake. Use unrefined sugars and less of them for homemade desserts that have an extra healthy boost. You get the idea…

Scratch-cooking takes time! Yet for his health, and mine, and our family’s, it’s worth it. But as an engineer, I am always thinking about ways to speed things up and save myself time. If you’ve never read the book “Cheaper By The Dozen,” we highly recommend it for a fun family read. It gives a glimpse into the mind of an engineer-type—we’re always microanalyzing our movements to eliminate “unnecessary motion.” Looking up the same information over and over again would definitely qualify as unnecessary motion! I have compiled a handful of simple but effective kitchen tips to help you save time cooking that nourishing, real food, so you can spend more time enjoying your good health.

Kitchen Tips to Help You Save Time

Here are just a couple of simple kitchen tips that you can implement in the kitchen today, most of them completely free!

Have a handful of favorite recipes?

I have a handful of recipes that I find myself using at least a couple of times a month. I’m an index-user in the cookbook, and looking up the same recipe over and over again wastes time. Write the page numbers of your favorites in the front cover of your cookbook! Or you could flag the pages with page protectors. Easy!

Always having to look up weight/volume conversions?

I don’t know about you, but I find it extremely inconvenient that a half cup of butter is the same as a quarter stick of butter. Or is it the other way around? Stop second-guessing yourself on conversions and stop wasting time looking the same information up on your phone over and over again! Instead, print yourself off a handy kitchen conversion chart and tape it inside the cabinet door above your favorite workspace! It’s not a bad idea to leave room for your own added notes. I have written on mine things like how much a cup of flour weighs, and what amount of salt to use when making a salt brine for fermented foods. I don’t have to stop to look those things up with my sticky fingers in the middle of my kitchen frenzies!

I have created just such a chart for you. With love from your favorite farmers! 🙂

Click here to download this free printable Kitchen Conversion Chart!

Forget to zero the scale?

On that same kitchen “cheat sheet,” write down the weights of your common mixing dishes. That way if you’re in the middle of creating something delicious and realize that it’s too late to weigh the dish, if you have the weight already recorded someplace, just do a little math to adjust your measurements! A calculator in the kitchen can be a help, too!

Want to reduce dishes when measuring?

Grab yourself a simple digital kitchen scale! You can usually find them for $10-$15. Even if you don’t do much baking, weighing ingredients is so much simpler and reduces the number of dishes to wash, especially if you’re using things like home-rendered lard. It’s one of my most-used kitchen tools!

I hope these tips save you some time and make your real-food-cooking more efficient. Thanks for supporting real food farmers like us!

What are your kitchen tips?

Cook-at-Home Challenge: What’s for dinner?

I will meal-plan for you this month!

Hopefully you got to read a bit about our upcoming Cook-at-Home Challenge introduced in our last newsletter. I know there are so many of our readers that have said, “I want to eat more healthily, I just don’t feel that I have the time to devote to cooking, and even if I did, I don’t know WHAT to cook!”

I can totally relate. Sometimes I ask my family, “What do you want for dinner?” And when they don’t respond with answers like “pizza” or “fried chicken,” then they say, “Whatever,” or “I don’t know.”

I don’t know anybody who got full on I Don’t Know. Sometimes what I really want is someone to just tell me what to make, and I’ll make it! (Well… except for things like fried chicken and pizza, ha!)

If this sounds like your life… I have great news for you. I’m ready to be that person that says, “Hey, here’s what you should make for dinner.” (I’m the first-born child and only girl among my siblings, so I’ve got Bossy down! 😉 )

I want to make it easy for you to get healthy meals on the table. Not only healthy, but delicious. Not only healthy and delicious, but affordable. Not only healthy, delicious, and affordable, but EASY.

Ready?

Here’s what’s on the menu:

Slow-Cooker Roast Chicken with Veggies
Homemade Chili
Slow-Cooker Beef Chuck Roast with Veggies
Oven-Roasted Drumsticks with Homemade Mac-n-Cheese & Steamed Veggies
Slow-Cooker Pulled Pork with Veggies
Deliciously Moist Meatloaf with Homemade Mashed Taters & Steamed Veggies
Slow-Cooker Roast Chicken with Veggies (again!)
Pan-fried Pork Chops with Homemade Mac-n-Cheese & Steamed Veggies

Pictured above is a super-simple dish of slow-cooker beef chuck roast with veggies. You can just toss it all in the crock-pot early in the day, and come home to a delicious home-cooked meal, hot and ready to serve.

I chose this collection of recipes for their simplicity, ability to fill the belly and please the palate, and frugal selection of ingredients. Even the least experienced cook should do well with the teaching-style recipes. No more powdered cheese mix. No more seasoning packets. No more cans of cream-of-chemical soup.

You can do this. Let me get you started! Join us for the Cook-at-Home Challenge in February. We’ll be making our monthly delivery rounds in Tyler and Shreveport this week, and Marshall and Longview next week. I hope to see you there!